South African psychologists learn from Dr. Anusha Lachman how essential strong interdisciplinary relationships are for patient care and career growth. Discover practical tips for building rapport and empathising with colleagues, especially within under-resourced healthcare settings, to foster trust and goodwill.
In this short clip, Dr. Anusha Lachman reminds us that building a career as a healthcare professional involves forming and maintaining relationships with other healthcare professionals. When we refer patients to our colleagues, we refer to those whom we trust and with whom we feel a warm, congenial relationship. It's important to be aware of this from the moment we begin our professional lives.
Anusha highlights that these relationships are really important when it comes to engaging with other healthcare professionals in a cross-disciplinary context. While we might implicitly understand and value the contribution of professionals within our own discipline, we also need to stretch ourselves and relate successfully to professionals of other disciplines. This often involves empathising with the position of other professionals, specifically their frustration within under-resourced hospitals, where competition for resources is real and stress levels are high.
Anusha suggests that it is worthwhile to practice interpersonal skills of empathy, and to avoid becoming reactive and defensive in more heated situations. It's really a useful reminder that so much of life is about relationships: putting others a ease, and forming relationships of trust and goodwill.
Anusha offers a full CPD-accredited video lecture on the ethics of prescribing psychiatric drugs to children, worth 3 ethics points, which you can access here
-Leanne